LEAVE IT TO THE GRAY LADY TO DESCRIBE JOHNNY MANZIEL AS A VICTIM: “In Johnny Manziel, a Human Cost to the N.F.L. Draft Machine,” someone at the New York Times actually wrote as a headline.

As the sports-oriented Deadspin blog notes in response:

It’s an irresponsible stretch to even suggest that Manziel’s precipitous draft-day fall had anything to do with his subsequent downward spiral. This is a person who had substance abuse problems before he left college, spent his entire life before entering the NFL with a shaky support system, and is and was, by all accounts, not a good person. The public eye post-draft wasn’t new to him—Manziel was one of the biggest college stars in decades, playing in Texas—and going to Cleveland might actually have lowered his local fame and reduced his circle of enablers.

When millionaire rock superstar Billy Joel inducted fellow millionaire rock superstar John Cougar Mellencamp into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2008, Joel actually said in his speech: “Don’t let this club membership change you, John. Stay ornery, stay mean….You’re right, John, this is still our country and we’ll always be victims of powerful people.”

On today’s college campuses, as Jonah Goldberg noted last year after Columbia’s “Mattress Girl,” the fake Rolling Stone rape article, and the general tendency of college campuses to be hotbeds of false accusations of rape, racism, and other fever swamp delusions, the will to power derives from victimhood. Today’s Times headline is confirmation that contagion has spread from college campuses to the rest of the left as well.

Update: Obama stenographer Jeffrey Goldberg is also eager to play the victimhood game with Manziel: